Monday, March 22, 2010

World Water Day, Monday March 22, 2010

Well, folks, today is World Water Day. I've never heard of or celebrated it until this year, and only in light of my new-found passion for digging wells. That's God for you--opening your eyes to things around you as you're ready for them.

As such, our family is making some changes in response to this, and I would encourage you to do the same. There's lots of different water conservation things to do around the house, but the one area where our family is failing miserably is with water use in the bathroom. Bathrooms and kitchens are the number 1 and number 2 respective water hogs in the home, so any changes that can be made here make a huge difference.

Here's our plan: obviously making small changes like not running the faucet while brushing our teeth and now scraping food into the garbage instead of rinsing dishes first (although I had to cheat with this morning's oatmeal ;) is going to help a bit, BUT our biggest challenge is going to be bathing. We are a big bath-loving family, and pretty much let the kids take full baths almost every night. HUGE water hogging happening here! So, our goal as a family, is to switch completely to showers, at least for the remainder of the month to see if we're able to lower our water bill, and hopefully will decrease our household usage significantly too.

It's not going to be easy since our son is terrified of the showerhead, so we may use even less water on him this month and opt for the kitchen sink, or better yet, a sponge. I know that going without water or using less isn't going to change the situations that we've been talking about in class, but it is making me and my family more aware of how and where we use water in our home, and hopefully will give the kids (and us) some ideas of how to be better stewards of our God-given natural resources. Happy World Water Day!